June 13 at the Annual McCay Day Celebration in Winsor McCay's hometown of Spring Lake, Michigan (1867-1885) I'll be showing a photo of the pioneering animator's first commerical drawing, made at age 13, on his school blackboard. It was the sinking of a ship called the Alpena, Winsor drew it the end of 1880. A local photographer snapped a picture of it and prints were made for sale... and Winsor began thinking, 'maybe I can make a living doing art!' McCay created the very first film cartoon in American, "Little Nemo," released in 1911. The Library I'm speaking at that hosts McCay Day is right next to the lot were his school stood, and down the street was the McCay home on the corner of Tolford and Meridian Streets. Our homeboy gets his day June 13, 2017... it's about the 9th year we've had the festival. And I wrote a book about McCay's life in Spring Lake:http://mccayboyhood.blogspot.com/

Doesn't this year also mark the 200th anniversary of McCay's birth? I wonder if there'll be any kind of celebration of that fact.

Thanks to your blog post, I see he was born in West Zorra, Ontario. I knew there was a Canadian connection, I believe the McCay film collection resides at the Cinematheque in Montreal, but I didn't realize he was actually born in this country. Hope McCay Day was a big success, would love to see a photo of that first commercial drawing of his!